


Beggar Thy Neighbour

by Elialys



Series: Trickling Down the Hourglass [5]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Drunken Shenanigans, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Humor, Idiots in Love, Love, Wedding Fluff, Wedding Night, drinking too much champagne, this is a feel good story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-25 23:33:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20732546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elialys/pseuds/Elialys
Summary: “Five quid you don’t make it through the ceremony without crying.”He slowly looks up to meet her gaze in the mirror, a scowl settling on his face. “I will not sink as low as placing a bet on a day like today. To be perfectly honest, I’m somewhat offended that you would even – ”“Ten quid, and the loser has to do all the dishes for a month.”He actually shifts his body to peer at her directly. “Done.”-- in which the Doctor and Rose get married (and Rose wins a few bets)





	Beggar Thy Neighbour

**Author's Note:**

> Alright, this is when I go off and ramble for a bit. If you’re uninterested and just want to read some fluff, do feel free to proceed straight to the story, I won’t blame you. Just a reminder that this is part of a series. It can be read on its own as it is a stand-alone, but I recommend you read my other stories first because…well, I quite like them.
> 
> Now if you’re still reading this note, you may have noticed after nearly 90,000 words of this series that I’m one of those writers who love to chit-chat in their notes, and that I am not afraid to write lengthy replies to comments. What can I say? I love my readers. I’ve always valued the author/reader relationship that can be built through time, and yes, through quite a bit of babbling, too. I love ALL my readers, by the way, not just the ones who leave me comments (although you guys do get extra cookies). I love the quiet ones, too, those of you who simply take the time to read what I have to give, because hopefully, what I have to give is what you were looking for.
> 
> Now I’ve been reminded over these past few weeks that generally speaking, a lot of us humans regularly go through really tough times. That’s just a fact of life, but sometimes, it’s hard to remember that on a platform like this one, it still applies, and that shit still happens. So I wanted to take a moment to send good thoughts to all of you out there who are struggling. And to those of you going through a happy, peaceful time…good for you ♥
> 
> This story is for all of you *smooches* It’s pure wedding fluff and love and stupid lovely idiots being in love and a tad drunk.

**Beggar Thy Neighbour**

They both agree on the fact that the wedding itself is a formality more than a cause for celebration, as it will help consolidate the Doctor’s rather frail ‘human identity’, where paperwork is concerned.

They book a date at one of the local register offices, and genuinely plan on simply showing up on the day to sign all the proper documents, when they’re reminded that they are required to bring two witnesses along.

Their choices being slightly limited, they ask Rose’s parents.

Jackie Tyler, while initially surprisingly good at not making any kind of fuss concerning the lack of fancy white wedding she inwardly always envisioned for her daughter, puts her foot down when she asks them what they plan on doing after the ceremony, and they merely glance at each other, shrugging.

“Order some pizza and watch the telly?” The Doctor suggests to Rose, who briefly considers the idea, then nods in approval, obviously pleased with that prospect. “We’re almost done with the third season of Game of Thrones,” he somehow feels the need to tell Jackie. “It’s getting rather – ”

“_Order some pizza and watch the telly?_” Jackie interrupts him, her voice high as she scowls at them in outrage. “You’re getting married_,_ you idiots! What the hell is wrong with you?”

“We’ve just watched the Red Wedding,” is all Rose has to say for herself. “Pizza sounds good to me.”

Pete being a sensible husband with a good survival instinct, he doesn’t get involved in the subsequent debate at all. He merely provides the money.

Jackie doesn’t completely get her way (as in, she fails to convince her daughter that what they need is to take their time and plan a big and extravagant ceremony). While they keep the booking at the register office, they also let her parents book them a room in one of the most expensive hotels in London, having made a reservation in said hotel’s restaurant as well for them to celebrate properly after the ceremony.

Despite their overall nonchalance, both the Doctor and Rose struggle with not letting it go to their head when the day comes.

They are, after all, getting married.

They do dress up for the occasion. He puts on an elegant, dark blue suit, while she goes for a simple, cream coloured dress. It’s nowhere as fancy (nor as fluffy) as all the ones her mother sent her pictures of these past couple of weeks, but it’s got a definite…vibe to it.

The Doctor is busy with his tie when she finally extracts herself from the bathroom where she’s been getting ready. The moment he sees her in the mirror, his eyes become suspiciously shiny.

“You gonna be ok?” She asks him as she puts on her shoes – although she knows better.

“Yep!” He answers, a tad too enthusiastically, already back to fixing his tie, which doesn’t need any fixing at all. “Absolutely fine.”

She watches him fidgeting, purposefully not looking at her anymore. “Five quid you don’t make it through the ceremony without crying.”

He slowly looks up to meet her gaze in the mirror, a scowl settling on his face. “I will not sink as low as placing a bet on a day like today. To be perfectly honest, I’m somewhat offended that you would even – ”

“Ten quid, and the loser has to do all the dishes for a month.”

He actually shifts his body to peer at her directly. “Done.”

To his credit, the Doctor holds it in _way_ longer than she anticipated, considering his reaction when he sees her appearing at her father’s arm.

Rose did not plan on having Pete walk her. But when she and the Doctor went their separate ways earlier, her father had told her in a thick voice that he never thought he would one day have a daughter to give away, and would she _please_ let him do this for her…she couldn’t possibly say no, beginning to wonder if she herself was going to make it through this without blubbering.

When she begins walking towards the Doctor, he sniffles and nothing short of turns away completely, Jackie standing nearby with a squirmy Tony in her arms; according to his parents, he’s been in a foul mood all day, and being forced into a mini-suit did not help in the least.

By the time Pete lets Rose go at the Doctor’s side, he’s composed himself enough to manage some brief eye-contact and a bit of a shaky smile. They let the marriage officiant do his speech, smiling politely through it all while behind them, Tony whimpers more and more loudly with regular shushing from his aggravated mother, who is slowly backing away from the front of the room, in the hope that it will make her child’s noises less intrusive.

To be perfectly honest, Rose is too focused and wrapped up in her awareness of her husband-to-be and what they’re about to do to notice much else. There could be a Dalek invasion happening outside, she’s not convinced it would be enough to stop them going through this.

When their turn finally comes to speak, Rose kindly goes first, dutifully reciting the phrases they’d both agreed upon a few days ago, picked straight from one of the many brochures that were given to them, so that he knows _exactly_ what she’s about to say and do.

“I call upon these persons here present to witness that I, Rose Tyler, take you, the Doctor, to be my lawful wedded husband – to love and to cherish – from this day forward.” She briefly looks away from his transfixed gaze to take his tremoring hand in hers, slowly passing the wedding band on his finger. “I give you this ring – as a symbol of our love.” She meets his watering eyes again. “All that I am, I give to you. All that I have, I share with you. I promise to love you, to be faithful and loyal, in good times and in bad. May this ring remind you always – of the words we have spoken today.”

Seconds stretch.

“I – ” He eventually croaks, but there’s no point in him even trying, obviously overwhelmed, bringing his left hand with its shining golden band up to his face to pinch at his eyes. “I’m – ” he half-chokes again, tears already trickling passed his fingers as if they weren’t there.

Her hands soon replace his upon his face, cupping his cheeks, which feel flushed against her palms. “I’m sorry…” He manages to articulate with a shake of his head and an embarrassed grimace.

She shakes her head, too, pulling his face down to press a soft kiss to his lips. “Don’t be daft,” she whispers tenderly. When all he can do is sniffle snottily, she wraps her arms around him, letting him squeeze her to him the way he does, his lips pressed to her neck. “You owe me ten quid, though,” she whispers in his ear, feeling his short laughter more than she hears it.

He straightens back up, eventually, and she helps him clear up his face as best as they can, before he manages to get his part done, although not in the most dignified of ways. At this point, it is also getting hard to ignore the toddler now positively wailing at the back of the room. By the time the Doctor is declaring that ‘all that he is, he gives to her,’ Rose is not exactly doing any better anyway.

All and all, it’s a rather soggy kind of wedding.

The reason for Tony’s miserable mood soon becomes obvious. They’re barely out of the register office that he’s vomiting all over Jackie’s dress, forcing the adults to revise their plan for the evening.

When Tony is taken home by his very apologetic parents, the newlyweds briefly entertain the thought of simply going home themselves, shedding off the fancy clothes and ordering that pizza they’d initially planned on ordering.

They do get a taxi to the hotel, eventually, as they _are_, after all, dressed up and newlyweds.

Although they haven’t started drinking yet, they are already obnoxiously giddy, which promises to lead to an interesting evening. It does not get better when they make their presence known at the hotel’s restaurant, and are greeted as ‘Mr. and Mrs. Tyler'.

They don’t have time to snort too much about it, as the hotel’s main hall becomes full of sounds and noises; dozens of people are coming in, led by another freshly married couple, who somehow manages to appear even more obnoxious than them, judging by their cheers and squeals.

“My apologies,” the maître d’hôtel says. “This is the Hasboros’ party. They have booked our main ballroom for the evening, which I assure you, is extremely well insulated.”

“Our party is much smaller,” Rose reassures him.

“We’ve actually lost half of it on the way here,” the Doctor adds. “It’s just the two of us.”

“What a pity,” the maître says, without a hint of emotion. “If you will follow me.”

They do, being given a table meant to accommodate five people comfortably, refusing to be moved to a smaller one. They actually sit side by side, not caring about being alone on such a big, fancy table, or about the fact that their squished bodies only occupy about fifteen percent of its circumference.

They go a bit crazy on the food – and the champagne, the Doctor suggesting they order dishes with the most odd-sounding names. After Rose asks for something called ‘_Scallop Sashimi with Meyer Lemon Confit_’, they start playing a game he entitles ‘Let’s Give Complicated Names to Simple Dishes’, a game he turns out to be _extremely _good at, although she’s equally good at guessing.

“_Pâté of roasted indigenous legumes, paired with a compote of seasonal berries, served on hearty sprouted wheat bread_,” becomes his winning stroke of genius, as Rose fails to guess he was talking about a peanut-butter and jam sandwich. She shamelessly blames the fact that, culturally speaking, it was too American for her to know better.

“D’you realise this is actually the first _real_ dinner date we go on?” Rose eventually asks him.

He chews thoughtfully on a piece of expensive crustacean. “Are you implying we might be doing this ‘romance’ thing a bit out of order, Mrs. Tyler?”

“I’m mostly implying that you’ve never taken me out on a proper date, Mr. Tyler.”

He stares at her, before grimacing. “That sounded weird to you, too, right?”

“Oh good,” she sighs in relief as she presses her chin to his shoulder. “I thought ‘t was just me being weirded out, ‘cause I’m so used to hearing my parents being called Mr. and Mrs. Tyler.”

“Nope, not just you,” he confirms, before downing what’s left of his glass of champagne – again. “I suppose it’s gonna take us some getting used to. That, and the ‘husband and wife’ bit.”

For the umpteenth time this evening, someone seems to magically appear at their table to refill their glasses. “Maybe we should just call each other that until it stops,” she suggests. “Being weird, I mean.”

“You want us to call each other ‘Husband and Wife’?” He repeats, insuring he understood correctly, her chin rolling slowly upon his shoulder.

“Technically speaking, those are our official titles, now. So what d’you say…husband.”

He leans forward, kissing her nose the way she suspected he would. “I say that I love you…wife.”

They stare at each other, before dissolving into _slightly_ intoxicated snorts of giddy laughter.

By the time they’re exiting the restaurant, they are most definitely passed being tipsy. Despite what the maître d’hôtel had said, the noises coming from the main ballroom aren’t _that _muffled, especially with one of its main doors currently open, a few people streaming in and out, before or after a smoke, probably.

Big signs on the other doors indicate that the ballroom is currently hosting 'Chuck & Cindy’s wedding!' 

Rose rolls her eyes at all this unnecessary extravagance, which causes the Doctor – her _husband_, to pepper kisses across her neck, muttering against her skin that the whole _bloody_ world doesn’t need to know about this wedding, and that theirs is much, much better anyway.

“Statistically speaking, our ratio of good-looking-people versus not-that-good-looking-people definitely trumps theirs,” he notes, bringing his face back to hers. “Ours being two to zero, while from what I’ve seen so far, theirs is more along the line of– ”

But she stops him by poking his stomach with a finger. “Don’t be mean,” she whispers against his lips.

“Fine,” he pouts a little. “But only because you’re my wife.” This makes no logical sense, but she’ll take it.

When they are shown to their suite, they are both taken aback by the sheer size of it.

“Well, that’s a slight upgrade from Norway,” he says.

“Is it me, or could our whole flat fit in there?” She asks.

“Actually, my initial and rough estimations lead me to believe it’s at least eight metre squares larger than our place. I doubt their bed is anywhere as good, though. I suggest we try it out.”

It soon becomes obvious that ‘trying the bed out’ has nothing to do with sex. Rose watches as her husband kicks off his shoes and springs onto the giant bed, soon bouncing onto it as if it was nothing more than a fancy trampoline.

While he acts like the five years old she’s always known him to be deep inside, she goes and checks the fridge, quite happy to find no less than six bottles of champagne stored in there. When she comes back to the main bedroom with one of them in hand, he lets himself fall upon the mattress.

“My dear wife,” he says. “This liquor shall most definitely get me drunk.”

“You were just bouncing on the bed,” she reminds him. “You, charming husband, are most definitely already drunk.”

“I am so not!” He protests, his voice high, and loud, and ever-so-slightly slurred.

“Here, open this for me,” she says, tossing the bottle his way, which he catches with surprising ease, given his current state. She goes to get the small suitcase she’d prepared for their night here, soon extracting one of the items she’d purposefully put in there for his enjoyment.

She turns around, and shows it to him.

He pops the bottle’s cork off.

“You brought…_playing cards_, to our honeymoon suite,” he says, somewhat in awe of her, quite unbothered by the champagne that has leaked down the bottle’s neck and all over his fingers.

“I did,” she says, her tongue peeking out from between her teeth.

He looks so genuinely delighted and carefree in that moment, Rose almost drops the set of cards back into the case to go climb over him instead, feeling the sudden urge to unfasten his tie and run her fingers through his hair until it becomes the tousled mess she loves so much.

There’s more than enough time left for that, though – about fifty years of it; it’s been a _long_ while since they battled with cards. Travelling on the TARDIS came with more downtime than most people realise. While they did things such as watching movies and reading books to pass time, there was a great deal of board and card games involved as well, which tended to be a lot more fun than just sitting there watching the telly with him – even if she always loved the domesticity of those moments (she never pointed this out to him in fear that he might protest and stop).

Rose does climb onto the bed, but not yet on him. They exchange props, trading the cards for the champagne bottle. In their current state of ‘tipsiness’, they’re passed bothering with glasses.

“Double or nothing?” He suggests as he starts shuffling the deck. “Twenty quid, and the loser is also responsible for keeping the bathroom clean for a month.”

“On top of the dishes?” Rose asks, half-hiccupping on champagne. When he nods, now dealing the cards equally between them, she makes a somewhat endeared face. “That’s sweet of you, being willing to do so many chores on your own.”

“Oi!” He protests. “I am not above making some kind of archaic and sexist comment about how I expect my wife to do the dishes in my home.” When she merely stares at him, he cringes. “Fine, I really am above all this bloody crap. To be perfectly honest, I actually find doing the dishes quite relaxing.”

“Let’s make it two months then.” She wiggles an eyebrow.

“Done.”

They end up playing some variant of what most humans would call _Beggar My Neighbour_, quite similar to the _Egyptian Rat Screw_. For the most part, it involves taking turn in putting cards face up onto the bed, while paying close attention to what is being shown, as various combinations lead to the fastest person ‘slapping’ the pile of cards to claim victory over said pile, until all fifty-two cards end up in the winner’s hand.

It is a rather ruthless game, one at which Rose is particularly fierce and unforgivable. He tries distracting her, launching himself into a one of his rushed lectures, the words spewing out of his mouth faster than the cards are being overturned, all about the correlation and similarities between this card game and the economic policy of a similar name, _Beggar Thy Neighbour_, explaining that the term was originally devised to characterize policies of trying to cure domestic depression and unemployment by shifting-effective-demand-away-from-imports-onto-domestically-produced-goods, eitherbytheuseoftariffsandquotasoimportsorbycompetitivedevaluation.

Unfortunately, he underestimated his wife’s dislike for doing the dishes.

“Change of plan,” the Doctor eventually whimpers, nursing his throbbing hand against his chest after one particularly dangerous (and failed) dive for the winning pile, his eyes once again shining with tears.

He takes one of his hidden cards with his uninjured hand and places it on his forehead, so that only Rose can see what number or face is on it. Somehow, the bottle of champagne has become more empty than full while they played, so that none of them cares much about the fact that this new game is usually better played with a large group of people.

They don’t even agree on proper rules, mostly just slapping cards onto their foreheads with more snorts of laughter, amused for no other reason than everything is rather amusing at the moment. The Doctor goes as far as trying to guess his own number by using telepathy – something he has been experimenting with lately, although it’s quite obvious he will not succeed tonight, now most definitely quite a little bit drunk.

Still, he tries, his fingers on Rose’s temples, their faces close, one of her hands still up to her own forehead to hold the card there with a finger, while his is currently sticking to his skin by sheer…dampness.

He stares into her eyes, and she stares back. Her eyes are lovely, even glazed as they are at the moment. They are lovely, and he really, really does love Rose’s lovely eyes.

The card slips from his forehead.

“We could always just have sex,” she suggests sluggishly.

“Meh…” he replies at once without thinking, making it sound like she just suggested something quite off-putting and absolutely boring, a matching scowl settling on his face. He doesn’t realise what he’s done, until her eyebrows shoot up in offense, pulling her body slightly away from his. “Oh,” he says. “Whoops, nope, no no no, sorry, that really was the wrong choice of noise to make there, wasn’t it?”

“You think?”

“You know me, I love having sex with you,” he tries explaining himself with a guilty pout. “Having sex with you has become one of my very favourite things to do, and I have had a _great_ deal of very favourite things in over nine-hundred-years, none of which were quite as…pleasant. But having sex with you tends to make me rather…sleepy, afterwards, as you know. I just…don’t want this day to end yet.”

He’s too good at this – getting himself out of trouble.

“We’re a bit too drunk for cards, though,” she points out, eventually. “I mean, we’re in a hotel, on our wedding night. I’m not sure what else we could – ”

It comes to her, then.

From the look on his face, it’s just come to him, too.

“Are you thinking what ‘m thinking?” She asks, although she already knows the answer, and maybe that telepathy thing _is_ working a little.

“Oh yes,” he confirms with a grin and a sweep of his head. “Let’s go crash that tacky party.”

Crashing Chuck and Cindy’s wedding reception is easier than they thought it would be. The two of them trying to be inconspicuous about it actually turns out to be the most conspicuous thing about it.

To their defence, it is slightly difficult to behave in any sort of sneaky manner when intoxicated.

No less than three employees see them ‘sneaking in’ the ballroom with a bottle of champagne, and Chuck and Cindy themselves realise within four and a half minutes of these strangers crashing their party that there are strangers crashing their party – Rose’s dress might not be as fluffy as Cindy’s, it’s still most definitely…wedding-ish.

They don’t say anything and let them have their fun, because Chuck and Cindy are genuinely nice people, and this other couple, although obviously quite drunk, appear to be inoffensive enough, as well as very much in love.

It shall also be noted that Chuck and Cindy are quite drunk, too.

In any case, there is quite a lot of dancing involved – _actual_ dancing, for once.

For some reason, Rose finds the sight of her husband’s dance moves particularly entertaining, which leads to her laughing so wholeheartedly that even the loud music is not enough to conceal it. Said husband is too enamoured by the sound of it, as well as by his wife’s beautiful smile to really give a damn, eventually finding themselves slow dancing on music that isn’t meant for slow dancing at all.

When it comes down to it, slow dancing really is just hugging while shuffling your feet a little, and they are rather fond of hugging each other a lot, pretty much all the time, and quite tightly, too.

The music does become slow at some point, and suddenly, _hugging_ isn’t enough anymore.

“Husband?” Rose eventually whispers in his ear. When he answers with a non-committal sound, she kisses that spot between his ear and jaw, feeling him shiver against her. “Let’s go back upstairs.”

He doesn’t argue.

By the time they make it there, they’re most definitely ready to consummate that marriage, the Doctor actually squishing Rose against the door as soon as it closes and kissing her the way his wife deserves to be kissed. Unfortunately, he soon remembers that trying to do _this_ while in this particular state is not…easy, at all.

Well, every part of him is working and willing, but he’s got no real control over his limbs, and no ability to pace this in any way, not to mention how everything is swaying and spinning and woooo, how the bloody hell are Rose’s fingers in so many places all at once?

He’s pretty sure she was merely tugging on his tie a moment ago, but now they’re naked, and on the bed, and she’s absolutely delightful against him, and under him, and blimey he’s not even sure if…yes, he’s definitely made contact, but…oh there is no way this is going to work.

“I am _so _drunk,” he announces loudly to his lovely wife, who, from what he can see and decipher, is rather drunk herself. “I don’t think I can do this. Not, you know, efficiently. I mean, I’m there, I know you can tell. Well, hopefully you can tell, but I seem to be missing some important coordinates. No, not coordinates, what am I even babbling about. Coordination. Yes, coordination is a bit lacking at the mo – ”

She interrupts him by pressing a palm to his mouth (a rather typical move between them), before pushing against his chest with a loud sigh. “Roll over, you lazy bum.”

He does as she says, his whole world tipping over in the process, his brain needing an extra few seconds to actually recalibrate so that his vision stops moving and swirling. When he regains the ability to see, he remains absolutely unable to do anything, not consciously, as waves of warmth begin to wash over him. Those are not actual _waves_, he realises (kind of), but Rose’s hips moving above him, swaying like her body is molten flesh, supple and hot and everything, absolutely _everything_.

He’s too drunk for this, yet his state of complete inebriety makes him feel like he’s flying, _literally_ flying, hazy pleasure spiking in his core, beginning to spread…then she moves again, and it settles down yet not really, gathering deeper and deeper.

He doesn’t immediately realise that she’s grabbed one of his hands and brought it to her breast, but there it is against his palm, her fingers around his, squeezing just like she’s squeezing him _there,_ so tight, her other hand down where their bodies meet, her head thrown back, undulating, not molten flesh but molten _water_, and this makes no sense yet it does, her atoms fire and ice like they are in the stars and in the depth of space itself.

His release comes, it definitely comes, the sensations there, everywhere, yet not…focused, not grounded, mostly floating and loose and oscillating, like sound waves scattering through the stretch of time.

Oh, this makes no sense either.

Rose has stopped swaying, her body mostly resting upon his, the way she always is, after, her face tucked under his chin. She’s stopped swaying, yet his world isn’t quite as still, not quite as still at all. The Doctor forces himself to concentrate, to focus on her if anything else, on the heat of her shallow breath upon his skin, on the weight of her, so wondrously familiar upon this bag of muscles and bones and ethanol-filled-blood that make up his body.

Despite his daze, something close to guilt is trying to poke through; he came alright, but he is absolutely unable to tell or remember if she made it to the finish line herself, if this is her usual post-pleasurable-hugging cuddling session, or if she’s just hiding her disappointment in the crook of his neck and already considering calling a divorce lawyer.

“Did you…” His slurred voice trails off, unable to voice his thoughts.

She comes to his rescue yet again, her hand moving from his chest to his face, patting his cheek affectionately, and more than a little drunkenly. “’m good, love. ‘t’s all good.”

Silence settles between them; even the spinning slows down ever so slightly, as tethered as he will ever be by this human resting upon his skin.

“Rose?” He speaks her name quietly, and it rolls off his tongue like she’s music.

“Mm?”

He swallows hard, trying to focus his thoughts and emotions, gather them into a proper sentence that makes sense. “We’re married,” he states at last, and it’s crude and simplistic, and nowhere as sophisticated as he’d like.

But it gets his point across.

He feels her nose against his neck, how she softly nuzzles his skin, before pressing one long, lingering kiss upon that favourite spot of hers.

“Quite right, too,” she whispers into his ear.

**Author's Note:**

> I do hope this put a smile on your face. A special thank you to Chuck and Cindy for lending me their ballroom (kudos if you spotted that movie reference). Also, you know authors and feedback. Never mandatory, but always appreciated ♥
> 
> Until next time, my lovelies. Remember to be kind to yourself and to others.


End file.
